The impact of COVID-19 on the Brazilian Power Sector: operational, commercial, and regulatory aspects

Authors

Keywords:

Demand Forecasting, Electricity Sector, Regulation, Power Demand

Abstract

The Coronavirus outbreak has imposed different levels of stay-at-home orders worldwide to help contain the disease spread, thus promoting severe impacts over the global economy. The World Bank expects 90% of the world economy to go into recession, being this the most severe global economic crisis since the second world war. Consequently, electricity consumption has fallen sharply in many countries, so as in Brazil, what provoked critical effects over many electricity sector stakeholders. In this context, this article discusses the main consequences of COVID-19’s outbreak over the Brazilian electricity sector and some measures taken by the government and the regulator to address such issues. Further, this work proposes a long-term electricity demand forecast methodology, taking into consideration bottom-up technics for general demand growth and top-down technics for the expansion of distributed generation in Brazil. The model uses as input economic forecasts from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Brazilian market consolidated expectations disclosed by the Brazilian Central Bank. The model proves to be useful to long-term demand forecast by producing results adherent to official forecasts published by Brazilian governmental institutions.

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Author Biographies

Clarissa Petrachini Gonçalves, Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo

Clarissa is a Consultant for Energy Markets at MRTS and a Ph.D. Researcher in Electrical Engineering at the University of São Paulo (USP). She also holds a degree and Master in Electrical Engineering at USP. Previously she has worked for four years with Energy Planning, Risk, and Regulation at EDP Brasil and for a year and a half as an Associate for Utilities' Equity Research at Citibank.

Dorel Soares Ramos, Universidade de São Paulo

Dorel Soares Ramos holds a B.Sc / M.Sc and D.Sc degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of São Paulo. He is currently a Consultant at the EDP Energias do Brasil Group, where he held the position of Regulation Director until March 2009, having also been Commercial Director (Energy Acquisition) and Regulation Director of the Distributors Bandeirante Energia / Escelsa (Espírito Santo) and Enersul (Mato Grosso do Sul), belonging to the same Business Group, as well as Regulation Director of Holding EDP Energias do Brasil. He is a PhD Professor in the Department of Energy Engineering and Electrical Automation at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo and is a Managing Partner of MRTS Consultoria e Engenharia Ltda. He has worked mainly on the following topics: power system planning, regulation and market design, commercialization of energy and risk analysis, generation of electrical energy and institutional modeling of the electrical sector, with the publication of 5 books and more than 250 articles in Conferences and Journals.

Pedro Souza Rosa, MRTS Engineering Consulting Services

More than 20 years in the system development market for the energy sector with operations at CSPE (Atual Arcesp), ENERQ-CT, EDP and Odebrecht. Expertise in energy trading rules, development of studies for energy planning as a strategy for energy purchase. Portfolio optimization and declaration in auctions, management of the level of contracting of agents D, G and C. Seasonalization and modulation of energy contracts; creation of databases of strategic information, risk assessment in the free and regulated environment. Since 2018 has been a consultant at MRTS, developing models for R&D projects with a focus on risk analysis, regulation, pricing, market intelligence and renewable energy.

Mateus Henrique Balan, MRTS Engineering Consulting Services

Mateus holds a degree in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis on Energy and Automation from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (2014) and a master degree from the same institution. Worked in the EDP group in the Risk and Energy Planning area, also worked at Clime Trading. Currently working as a consultant at MRTS working in the following fields: Regulation of the Electricity Sector, planning of investments in generation, tariff reviews and readjustments, complementary energy between renewable sources, energy commercialization, risk analysis, optimization problems and data analysis.

Bernardo Bezerra, PSR

Has a BSc in Electrical and Industrial Engineering, a MSc and a DSc in Electrical Engineering. He joined PSR in 2004 where he is currently a Technical Director. He has been leading and conducting projects in the following areas: (i) integrated electricity and gas planning studies; (ii) energy auctions (design, analysis and bidding strategies); (iii) risk management; (iv) regulatory assessment and support for investors; (v) tariff design; market design; (vi) business strategic and (vii) economic valuation of generation projects. He is a consultant to the World Bank, IDB and other multilateral institutions, with experience in over twenty countries including USA, Vietnam, Turkey, Austria, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and all Central American countries. He is a member of the IEEE Power Engineering Society and teaches classes on the energy sector for Master in Business Administration courses. He is the author and co-author of 2 book chapters and more than 40 papers published in journals and local/international conferences. He is the chair of the Latin America Working Group of IEEE and the reviewer of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (TPS). He has been a speaker at conferences and seminars in Brazil and abroad.

Mateus Cavalieri, PSR

Mateus A. Cavaliere has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from UFRJ. Between 2014 and 2015, has studied Energy Systems at Hochschule Ruhr West, Germany. In 2018 started the MSc in Electrical Engineering in PUC/RIO, developing research in portfolio optimization and contracts pricing. Joined PSR in 2015 and has been working in (i) tariffs studies and energy pricing in the environments of regulated and free contracting; (ii) strategy assessment studies for supplying energy to consumers; (iii) economic and financial evaluations of generation and distribution companies; and (iv) regulatory advisory.

Rodrigo Ferreira de Mello, CTG Brasil (China Three Gorges Corporation)

Electrical engineer graduated at UNICAMP, with a MBA in Business Management at FGV and an MBA in Finance at FIA. He has more than 10 years of experience in the brazilian energy sector and since 2019 has been working at CTG Brasil as Energy Planning Specialist, Solid knowledge in energy market analysis and regulatory affairs.

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Published

2021-05-27

How to Cite

Petrachini Gonçalves, C., Soares Ramos, D., Souza Rosa, P., Henrique Balan, M., Bezerra, B., Cavalieri, M., & Ferreira de Mello, R. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on the Brazilian Power Sector: operational, commercial, and regulatory aspects. IEEE Latin America Transactions, 20(4), 529–536. Retrieved from https://latamt.ieeer9.org/index.php/transactions/article/view/4988

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